ant it out. Mr. Charles
Miller, in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions, has shown
us the wonderful effects of successive transplantation. How far it might
be worth the English farmer's while to bestow more labour in the business
of sowing the grain, with the view of a proportionate increase in the
rate of produce, I am not competent, nor is it to my present purpose, to
form a judgment. Possibly as the advantage might be found to lie rather
in the quantity of grain saved in the sowing than gained in the reaping,
it would not answer his purpose; for although half the quantity of
seed-corn bears reciprocally the same proportion to the usual produce
that double the latter does to the usual allowance of seed, yet in point
of profit the scale is different. To augment this it is of much more
importance to increase the produce from a given quantity of land than to
diminish the quantity of grain necessary for sowing it.

(*Footnote. In an address from the Bath Agricultural Society dated 12th
October 1795 it is strongly recommended to the cultivators of land (on
account of the then existing scarcity of grain) to adopt the method of
dibbling wheat. The holes to be made either by the common dibble, or with
an implement having four or more points in a frame, at the distance of
about four inches every way, and to the depth of an inch and a half;
dropping TWO grains into every hole. The man who dibbles is to move
backwards and to be followed by two or three women or children, who drop
in the grains. A bush-hurdle, drawn across the furrows by a single horse,
finishes the business. About six pecks of seed-wheat per acre are saved
by this method. The expense of dibbling, dropping, and covering is
reckoned in Norfolk at about six shillings per acre. Times Newspaper of
20th October 1795.)

FERTILITY OF SOIL.

Notwithstanding the received opinion of the fertility of what are called
the Malay Islands, countenanced by the authority of M. Poivre and other
celebrated writers, and still more by the extraordinary produce of grain,
as above stated, I cannot help saying that I think the soil of the
western coast of Sumatra is in general rather sterile than rich. It is
for the most part a stiff red clay, burned nearly to the state of a brick
where it is exposed to the influence of the sun. The small proportion of
the whole that is cultivated is either ground from which old woods have
been recently cleared, whose leaves had formed a